In-depth: PostHog vs Amplitude

Sep 10, 2024

How is PostHog different?

1. Engineering and product-led

What does this mean?

It means our pricing is 100% transparent.
It means engineers make product decisions.
It means we ship fast and iterate based on user feedback.
It means engineers do support – all product teams have a weekly support hero.
It means we work in the open – our roadmap and company handbook are public.
It means no jumping on a "quick call" (unless you want to) – see how we do sales.

2. Affordable and transparent pricing

We're committed to sustainably low pricing, and every customer gets a generous free monthly usage allowance. Inputting a card unlocks almost every feature, but you'll pay nothing if you stay within the free tier. See the price comparison section for more.

3. Analytics and data warehouse in one

Use our built-in data warehouse and SQL insight builder to analyze data from Stripe, Hubspot, Salesforce, and Zendesk.

Already have a warehouse? You can link it with ours to analyze your data in PostHog, and batch export event and person data from PostHog to your data warehouse.

Product comparison

Product analytics

	PostHog	Amplitude
Free usage How much free usage do you get each month?	1 million events	50k tracked users (Starter plan only)
Autocapture Capture events without manual logging	✔	✖
Query editor Write your own queries in SQL	✔	Add on
Dashboards Combine insights into shareable dashboards	✔	✔
Graphs and trends Build custom insights and visualizations	✔	✔
Funnels Track users through a sequence of events	✔	✔
Retention Visualize which users stay, for how long	✔	✔
User paths Track user flows and where they drop-off	✔	✔
Cohorts Combine users based on properties and events for group analysis	✔	✔
Group analytics Track metrics at a company and account level	✔	✔
Lifecycle analysis Understand who is dormant, churning, and thriving	✔	✔
Stickiness Find out what events keep users coming back.	✔	✔
Custom formulas Use formulas to calculate unique insights	✔	✔

💡 Good to know: PostHog supports autocapture, which means you can implement PostHog in mere minutes and ensure you don't miss out on events you haven't manually instrumented. Don't want autocapture? Just turn it off – we offer the best of both worlds.

Feature flags

	PostHog	Amplitude
Free usage How much free usage do you get each month?	1 million API requests	50k tracked users
Boolean flags Simple flags returning true or flag	✔	✔
Multivariate flags Flags with multiple customizable values	✔	✔
Payloads Flags with string, number, or JSON payloads	✔	✔
Local evaluation Store flag definitions locally	✔	✔
Percentage rollouts Target percentages of a group	✔	✔
Custom targeting Target users based on user properties, custom contexts	✔	✔
Scheduling Schedule flags to turn on or off	✔	✖
Environments Manage flags for dev, staging, prod	Partial	✖
Bootstrapping Flags available on frontend application load	✔	✔
Early access Manage betas, test features	✔	✖

💡 Good to know: PostHog's feature flags are tightly integrated with other features, so you can target session replays, surveys, and more using existing feature flags. See our guide on the benefits of feature flags for more.

Experiments

	PostHog	Amplitude
Free usage How much free usage do you get each month?	1 million API requests	None
Web experiments Run A/B tests on web apps and websites	✔	✔
Mobile experiments Run A/B tests on Android and iOS apps	✔	✖
Custom goals Customize metrics that a test tracks	✔	✔
Secondary metrics Monitor impact on unrelated metrics	✔	✔
Split testing Split participants into groups	✔	✔
Multivariate (A/B/n) testing Test multiple variants of a change	✔	✔
Statistical significance Automatically checks for statistical significance	✔	✔
Recommended run time Calculates the recommended run time and sample size	✔	✖
Holdout testing Withhold multiple features to measure cumulative impact	Partial	✔
Statistics engine How the results of an experiment are calculated	Bayesian	Sequential

💡 Good to know: Amplitude's Web Experiments feature isn't available on any self-serve plan and the price isn't disclosed. You must contact its sales team to use it.

Session replay

	PostHog	Amplitude
Free usage How much free usage do you get each month?	5,000 recordings	1,000 recordings
Web app recordings Capture recordings from single-page apps	✔	✔
Mobile app recordings Capture recordings in iOS and Android apps	✔	✖
Heatmaps Visualize where users click in your app or website	✔	✖
Identity detection Link recordings to user IDs	✔	✔
Console logs Capture extra content from a user's browser	✔	✖
Playlists Sort recordings into static and dynamic playlists	✔	✖
Performance monitoring Track network events within a session	✔	✖
Privacy masking Censor personal information from playback	✔	✔
Conditional recording Only capture the sessions you want	✔	✖
DOM explorer Explore an interactive snapshot of replays	✔	✖
Export recordings Save important recordings offline	✔	✖
Sample recorded sessions Restrict the percentage of sessions that will be recorded	✔	✖
Record via feature flag Only record sessions for users that have the flag enabled	✔	✖

💡 Good to know: Replays let you watch how users experience your app, diagnose issues, improve support, and understand real user behavior in a way raw data can't. They are reconstructions of the session, not video recordings of user's screen. Private info, such as passwords, are masked.

Surveys

	PostHog	Amplitude
Free usage How much free usage do you get each month?	250	n/a
Open text Free text answers and feedback	✔	✖
Product rating Rank using emojis or number	✔	✖
Single choice Select one answer from multiple	✔	✖
Multiple choice Select more than one answer from multiple	✔	✖
NPS surveys Net Promoter Score survey template	✔	✖
PMF surveys Product-market fit survey template	✔	✖
User property targeting Target users based on any of their user properties	✔	✖
Custom colors & positioning Customize the colors of your surveys to match your brand	✔	✖
Custom HTML Add custom HTML to your survey text	✔	✖
API mode Create surveys via the API	✔	✖

💡 Good to know: Survey templates make it easy to run NPS, product-market-fit (PMF), and customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys in just a few clicks. Read our guide comparing NPS, CSAT and CES to for more on how to use surveys.

Price comparison

PostHog charges for usage – i.e. analytics events, recorded replays, and so on. Amplitude charges based on monthly tracked users (MTUs).

In the comparison, we're assuming 75 identified events per monthly tracked user (MTU), which is the typical usage for most PostHog users, though many customers send less than this.

Monthly tracked users	Amplitude Growth	PostHog
1k	$61	$0	$732 per year cheaper
2.5k	$99	$0	$1,888 per year cheaper
5k	$124	$0	$1,488 per year cheaper
10k	$186	$0	$2,232 per year cheaper
25k	$249	$217	$1,128 per year cheaper
50k	$561	$430	$1,572 per year cheaper
75k	$841	$625	$2,592 per year cheaper
100k	$1,061	$820	$2,892 per year cheaper
150k	$1,584	$1,207	$4,524 per year cheaper
200k	$2,100	$1,600	$6,000 per year cheaper
300k	$3,150	$2,091	$12,708 per year cheaper

We also provide numerous ways to control how many events you send and reduce your costs, including the option to send cheaper anonymous events.

Identified vs anonymous events

Anonymous events only include non-identifying data, such as referral data (UTMs, domains, etc), device type, and basic location information.

They're useful if you're tracking a huge number of users and only want to analyze aggregate data, such as on a content website with millions of visitors.

Anonymous events are cheaper for us to ingest, so we charge you between 55% and 80% less for them. You'll only be charged the identified event rate when you call identifying functions like posthog.identify() or posthog.group(), or capture an event from an already-identified user.

Monthly events	Identified events	Anonymous events	Change
0-1 million	Free	Free
1-2 million	$0.0002480/event	$0.0000500/event	80% cheaper
2-15 million	$0.0001040/event	$0.0000343/event	67% cheaper
15-50 million	$0.0000655/event	$0.0000295/event	55% cheaper
50-100 million	$0.0000364/event	$0.0000218/event	40% cheaper
100-250 million	$0.0000187/event	$0.0000150/event	20% cheaper
250+ million	$0.0000100/event	$0.0000090/event	10% cheaper

See We've decided to make less money [Part 2] for more on the difference between anonymous and identified events. You can use the calculator on our pricing page to estimate how much you'll pay.

Platform comparison

Integrations

	PostHog	Amplitude
Imports Import data from data warehouses and other sources	✔	✔
Exports Export data to data warehouses other destinations	✔	✔
Segment Send events via Segment	✔	✔
Zapier Trigger Zapier automations	✔	✖
Sentry Connect to Sentry data	✔	✖
Zendesk Two-way integration for customer support	✔	✖
Slack Alerts for Slack	✔	✔
Microsoft Teams Alerts for Microsoft Teams	✔	✔
Community integrations Build your own integration	✔	✖
Google Ads Import ROI data from Google Ads	✖	✔

💡 Good to know: This is just a small sample of available integrations. See our data pipeline docs for a full list of destinations, and our data warehouse docs for a complete list of sources.

Security and compliance

	PostHog	Amplitude
User privacy options Anonymize users, drop personal data	✔	✔
History, audit logs Manage and view flag edits and related users	✔	✔
GDPR-ready Can be compliant with GDPR	✔	✔
HIPAA-ready Can be compliant with HIPAA	✔	✔
SOC 2 Type II SOC 2 security certification	✔	✔
2FA Enforce login with two-factor authentication	✔	✔
SAML/SSO Use SAML or single sign-on authentication	Enterprise	Enterprise

💡 Good to know: We offer a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) for any customer on the Teams add-on, which also includes priority support, SSO enforcement, and additional collaboration features.

FAQ

Does PostHog offer a free trial?

We don't need to. Every customer gets a generous free usage allowance each month, so you can sign up and start using PostHog for nothing. Here's how PostHog and Amplitude's free tiers compare:

	PostHog	Amplitude
Free analytics usage Free tier usage each month	1 million events	50k tracked users
Free replay usage Free tier usage each month	5,000 recordings	1,000 recordings
Saved insights Number of you charts you can create	Unlimited	10 only
Custom events Create custom tracking events	✔	✖
Cohorts Combine users based on properties and events for group analysis	✔	✖
Formulas Create custom insights using formulas	✔	✖
Feature flags Release and control features	✔	✔
A/B testing Run tests on users and groups	✔	✖
Surveys Gather feedback and book user interviews	✔	✖

Companies that qualify for our startup program also get $50,000 in PostHog credit and a range of additional benefits.

Can PostHog replace Google Analytics?

Yes. PostHog can replace Google Analytics for many use cases – our marketing team uses PostHog, for example. You can integrate PostHog into your website using Google Tag Manager. See our comparison of PostHog and Google Analytics 4 and an intro to PostHog for Google Analytics users for more.

Is PostHog easy to deploy?

Yes. Just paste our web snippet within the <head> tags your product or website and you're good to go in just a few minutes. This works for apps, blogs, scripts, no-code site builders, and more. See our installation documentation for more options. We support dozens of client-side and server-side SDKs.

How can I estimate my usage?

The easiest way is to sign up to PostHog, integrate our snippet, then check the projection on your billing page after a few days. Alternatively, you can guesstimate by multiplying your current monthly active users by an estimate of events generated per user – 50 to 100 per user is a good starting point. See Estimating usage & costs in our docs for more.

Does PostHog block bots by default?

Yes. See the full blocklist in our docs. You need to manually enable bot blocking in Amplitude. This means event and DAU counts can look higher in Amplitude than PostHog.

Can I use PostHog with a CDP? (Segment, Rudderstack, etc.)

Yes. See Using PostHog with a CDP in our docs.

How does PostHog compare to other Amplitude alternatives?

Still need some convincing? See our guide to the most popular Amplitude alternatives.